Of these, the most interesting personality was Hao Shih-chiu,[156] scholar, painter, poet, and potter, who signed his wares with the fanciful name _Hu yin tao jên_[157] (Taoist hidden in a tea pot), to show that he “put his soul” into the making of his pots. He lived, we are told,[158] in exaggerated simplicity, in hut, with a mat for a door and a broken jar for a window; but he was so celebrated as a man of talent and culture that his hut was frequented by the _literati_, who capped his verses and admired his wares. The latter were of great refinement and exquisitely beautiful, and his white “egg shell”[159] wine cups were so delicate as to weigh less than a gramme.[160] No less famous were his red wine cups, bright as vermilion, the colour floating in the glaze like red clouds. They were named _liu hsia chan_[161] (_lit._ floating red cloud cups), which has been poetically rendered by Bushell as “dawn-red wine cups” and “liquid dawn cups,” and were evidently one of the reds of the _chi hung_ class produced by copper oxide in the glaze, like the beautiful wine cups with clouded maroon red glaze of the early eighteenth century. All these wares were eagerly sought by connoisseurs throughout the Chinese empire. “There were also elegantly formed pots (hu), in colour pale green, like Kuan and Ko wares, but without the ice crackle, and golden brown[162] tea pots with reddish tinge, imitating the contemporary wares of the Ch’ên family at Yi-hsing, engraved underneath with the four characters, _Hu yin tao jên_.” The “red cloud” cups are eulogised by the poet Li Jih-hua in a verse addressed to their maker as fit to be “started from the orchid pavilion to float down the nine-bend river.”[163] [Illustration: Plate 76.--Blue and White Porcelain. Sixteenth Century. Fig. 1.--Vase with monster handles, archaic dragons. Height 10⅞ inches. _Halsey Collection._ Fig. 2.--Hexagonal Bottle, white in blue designs. Mark, a hare. Height 11½ inches. _Alexander Collection._ Fig. 3.--Bottle with “garlic mouth,” stork and lotus scrolls, white in blue. Height 11 inches. _Salting Collection._ Fig. 4.--Vase (_mei p’ing_), Imperial dragon and scrolls. Wan Li mark on the shoulder. Height 15 inches. _Coltart Collection._]